When he was outside of Dhamsawaat, stalking bone ghuls through cobwebbed catacombs or sand ghuls across dusty plains, he often had to settle for chewing sweet-tea root. Such campfireless times were hard, but as a ghul hunter Adoulla was used to working within limits. When one faces two ghuls, waste no time wishing for fewer was one of the adages of his antiquated order. But here at home, in civilized Dhamsawaat, he felt he was not really a part of the world until he’d had his cardamom tea.
He raised the bowl to his lips and sipped, relishing the piquant sweetness. He heard Yehyeh’s shuffling approach, smelled the pastries his friend was bringing. This, Adoulla thought, was life as Beneficent God intended it.
Yehyeh set his own teabowl and a plate of pastries on the stone table with two loud clinks, then slid his wiry frame onto the bench beside Adoulla. Adoulla had long marveled that the cross-eyed, limping teahouse owner could whisk and clatter bowls and platters about with such efficiency and so few shatterings. A matter of practice, he supposed. Adoulla knew better than most that habit could train a man to do anything.
Yehyeh smiled broadly, revealing the few teeth left to him.
He gestured at the sweets. “Almond nests—the first of the day, before I’ve even opened my doors. And God save us from fat friends who wake us too early!”
Adoulla waved a hand dismissively. “When men reach our age, my friend, we should wake before the sun. Sleep is too close to death for us.”
Yehyeh grunted. “So says the master of the half-day nap! And why this dire talk again, huh? You’ve been even gloomier than usual since your last adventure.”
Adoulla plucked up an almond nest and bit it in half. He chewed loudly and swallowed, staring into his teabowl while Yehyeh waited for his reply. Finally Adoulla spoke, though he did not look up.
“Gloomy? Hmph. I have cause to be. Adventure, you say? A fortnight ago I was face-to-face with a living bronze statue that was trying to kill me with an axe. An axe, Yehyeh!” He shook his head at his own wavering tea-reflection. “Threescore years old, and still I’m getting involved in such madness. Why?” he asked, looking up.
Yehyeh shrugged. “Because God the All-Knowing made it so. You’ve faced such threats and worse before, my friend. You may look like the son of the bear who screwed the buzzard, but you’re the only real ghul hunter left in this whole damned-by-God city, O Great and Virtuous Doctor.”
Yehyeh was baiting him by using the pompous honorifics ascribed to a physician. The ghul hunters had shared the title of “Doctor” but little else with the “Great and Virtuous” menders of the body. No leech-wielding charlatan of a physician could stop the fanged horrors that Adoulla had battled.
“How would you know what I look like, Six Teeth? You whose crossed eyes can see nothing but the bridge of your own nose!” Despite Adoulla’s dark thoughts, trading the familiar insults with Yehyeh felt comfortable, like a pair of old, well made sandals. He brushed almond crumbs from his fingers onto his spotless kaftan. Magically, the crumbs and honey spots slid from his blessedly unstainable garment to the ground.
“You are right, though,” he continued, “I have faced worse. But this… this…” Adoulla slurped his tea. The battle against the bronzeman had unnerved him. The fact that he had needed his assistant Raseed’s sword arm to save him was proof that he was getting old. Even more disturbing was the fact that he’d been daydreaming of death during the fight. He was tired. And when one was hunting monsters, tired was a step away from dead. “The boy saved my fat ass. I’d be dead if not for him.” It wasn’t easy to admit.
“Your young assistant? No shame in that. He’s a dervish of the Order! That’s why you took him in, right? For his forked sword—‘cleaving the right from the wrong’ and all that?”
“It’s happened too many times of late,” Adoulla said. “I ought to be retired. Like Dawoud and his wife.” He sipped and then was quiet for a long moment. “I froze, Yehyeh. Before the boy came to my rescue. I froze. And do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking that I would never get to do this again—sit at this table with my face over a bowl of good cardamom tea.”
Yehyeh bowed his head, and Adoulla thought his friend’s eyes might be moist. “You would have been missed. But the point is that you did make it back here, praise be to God.”
“Aye. And why, Six Teeth, don’t you say to me ‘Now stay home, you old fart?’ That is what a real friend would say to me!”
“There are things you can do, O Buzzard-Beaked Bear, that others can’t. And people need your help. God has called you to this life. What can I say that will change that?” Yehyeh’s mouth tightened and his brows drew down. “Besides, who says home is safe? That madman the Falcon Prince is going to burn this city down around our ears any day now, mark my words.”
They had covered this subject before. Yehyeh had little use for the treasonous theatrics of the mysterious master thief who called himself the Falcon Prince. Adoulla agreed that the “Prince” was likely mad, but he still found himself approving of the would-be usurper. The man had stolen a great deal from the coffers of the Khalif and rich merchants, and much of that money found its way into the hands of Dhamsawaat’s poorest—sometimes hand delivered by the Falcon Prince himself.
Yehyeh sipped his tea and went on. “He killed another of the Khalif’s headsmen last week, you know. That’s two now.” He shook his head. “Two agents of the Khalif’s justice, murdered.”
Adoulla snorted. “ ‘Khalif’s justice’? Now there are two words that refuse to share a tent! That piece of shit isn’t half as smart a ruler as his father was, but he’s twice as cruel. Is it justice to let half the city starve while that greedy son of a whore sits on his brocaded cushions eating peeled grapes? Is it justice to—”
Yehyeh rolled his crossed eyes, a grotesque sight. “No speeches, please. No wonder you like the villain—you’ve both got big mouths! But I tell you, my friend, I’m serious. This city can’t hold a man like that and one like the new Khalif at the same time. We are heading for battle in the streets. Another civil war.”
Adoulla scowled. “May it please God to forbid it.”
Yehyeh stood up, stretched, and clapped Adoulla on the back. “Aye. May All-Merciful God put old men like us quietly in our graves before this storm hits.” The cross-eyed man did not look particularly hopeful of this. He squeezed Adoulla’s shoulder. “Well. I’ll let you get back to your book, O Gamal of the Golden Glasses.”
Adoulla groaned. Back when he’d been a street brawling youth on Dead Donkey Lane, he himself had used the folktale hero’s name to tease boys who read. He’d learned better in the decades since. He placed a hand protectively over his book. “You should not contemn poetry, my friend. There’s wisdom in these lines. About life, death, one’s own fate.”
“No doubt!” Yehyeh aped the act of reading a nonexistent book in the air before him, running a finger over the imaginary words and speaking in a grumble that was an imitation of Adoulla’s own. “O, how hard it is to be so fat! O, how hard it is to have so large a nose! O Beneficent God, why do the children run a-screaming when I come a-walking?”
Before Adoulla could come up with a rejoinder on the fear Yehyeh’s own crossed eyes inspired in children, the teahouse owner limped off, chuckling obscenities to himself.
His friend was right about one thing: Adoulla was, praise God, alive and back home—back in the Jewel of Abassen, the city with the best tea in the world. Alone again at the long stone table, he sat and sipped and watched early morning Dhamsawaat come to life and roll by. A thick necked cobbler walked past, two long poles strung with shoes over his shoulder. A woman from Rughal-ba strode by, a bouquet in her hands, and the long trail of her veil flapping behind. A lanky young man with a large book in his arms and patches in his kaftan moved idly eastward.